Siri Creators Demo New Viv AI

(CCM) — On Monday, Kittlaus took the stage at Disrupt NYC to unveil the new AI, Viv. In the 20-minute demo, Viv handled various complex questions with ease, even connecting to third-party merchants to purchase goods or make reservations. While Viv was developed by the team who created Siri back in 2007, the new AI assistant is more like Amazon's Alexa or Facebook's Messenger bots than the Apple AI. The company behind Viv, Viv Labs, says that this assistant hopes to be "the intelligence interface for everything" and that "perfecting the third-party ecosystem" is critical to Viv's success. Viv also boasts "software that's writing itself" in mere seconds, according to Kittlaus, which means the AI will be able to grow and learn more quickly than other AI assistants.

"Viv is designed to be devices agnostic — think one platform, open to all services, for all devices, personalized for you," explained Adam Koopersmith, a partner with Pritzker Group Venture Capital, one of Viv's investors. "Our sense is there will be a move away from having hundreds of different apps that act independently. These services will be integrated into everyday life. Viv will be the platform to enable it." Viv Labs did not reveal a set launch date for the AI assistant, but said that the plan is to begin a "rolling launch toward the end of the year." Viv will launch as "phone apps and other things that we're working on with partners," which could mean some Viv-enabled hardware.